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| Tuesday, 3 February 2004 |
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Too narrow ownership laws impoverish and block change Western-style property rights pushed by international economic and financial institutions, which result in the loss of diverse and flexible types of property rights - such as communal and indigenous types of property rights - threaten the economic livelihoods of millions of poor people in the world and block solutions to major environmental crises. Western-style property rights are worsening prospects for the millions of poor people in the world and undermining development spending, says the latest report by the London-based New Economics Foundation (NEF), Limits to Property. Published on the eve of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)'s ministerial meeting, the report argued that there has been a damaging erosion of communal and indigenous types of property rights - and that will directly harm the prospects of the world's poorest. The loss of diverse and flexible types of property rights mirrors the growing global gap between rich and poor. As a result, the economic livelihoods of millions of people in poverty are threatened and progress towards solving major environmental crises like climate change is blocked. Far from being an incentive to innovative solutions, the global triumph in private property law above all other forms of ownership has produced counter-productive and bizarre outcomes. They range from the simply eccentric - a single individual is currently claiming ownership of the entire solar system (except Earth) and sells plots of land to willing consumers - to giant pharmaceutical companies that restrict access to life-saving treatments in the name of profit. The 'one size fits all' approach, pushed through international economic and financial institutions like the WTO and World Bank, and linked to aid programmes, is increasing the economic vulnerability of the world's poorest people. Report co-author and NEF policy director Andrew Simms said: 'We are so blinded by economic ideology that simple solutions to big problems are being missed. There are limits to how far private property can be respected, and we meet them in the treatment of major diseases, landlessness and homelessness, and in the abuse of the global commons of the atmosphere in problems like climate change.' Economies have traditionally been managed through a combination of individual, common, traditional and dynamic property rights. Different approaches to owning the stuff of economic life ranging from seeds, to land and water have been tailored to match particular circumstances. Today private property laws increasingly protect the resources and knowledge of wealthy countries and their corporations, but developing nations have never been compensated under similar rules for the ideas and natural resources taken from them by the West. The report calls for a return to diverse approaches to ownership tailored to solve specific problems including, for example: * Community Land Trusts. * Equal entitlements to the global commons of the atmosphere. * Ownership transfer and time limited corporations. * Mutual public services. * Participative product development, like that which produced the software Linux. * Intellectual Property Free Zones. (Third World Network Features) |
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